


the distance between our feet is not the same as the distance between our hearts

by deplore



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-22
Updated: 2015-01-22
Packaged: 2018-03-08 16:20:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3215606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deplore/pseuds/deplore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Killua asks Gon for something important. Ten months and ten days pass before he answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the distance between our feet is not the same as the distance between our hearts

“I know that no matter what’s said, you’re going to do what you want,” Killua says. “You’re gonna make reckless decisions and think with your heart instead of your head. It’d be pointless if I told you to be calm no matter what, so I’ll tell you this instead. When you fuck up, you’d better do it magnificently, so that I can see the flames and the wreckage clear across continents… and then come back and tell me you’d do it all over again if you had to. Got it, Gon?”

There is no reply. That much is to be expected, though – the only person in the room is Killua, after all.

 

* * *

 

When Gon decided to go to the Dark Continent, nobody had expected it. Without speaking a word to his friends over the months it must’ve taken for him to make preparations, he’d secured a financial sponsor, readied transportation, purchased equipment, filed a request to the Hunter’s Association, and trained every day for the single purpose of undergoing the journey. He’d waited for the right moment – the day his family and friends had gotten together to plan a surprise party for his eighteenth birthday – and innocuously announced his plans, as if he had merely decided to go on an extended vacation rather than to venture through hell on earth. Under the circumstances of the fact that they had all gathered to celebrate the anniversary of Gon’s birth, it’d been difficult for anybody to raise serious opposition right off the bat.

For most, it was a shock. For Killua, though, all he could see were the traits of a flawless assassination: meticulous preparation, a perfect strike to the vitals when his targets’ guards were down, and a smooth exit strategy, all delivered with a calm and constant demeanor.

To Killua’s surprise, it had been Leorio and Kurapika who were the only ones who didn’t object on the face of things. Seeing that people who had been to the Dark Continent and back had no reservations, Mito had given her approval a few days afterwards. And after that, like a chain reaction, everybody else had decided to support the endeavor, until Killua realized he was the only one left who still wanted to tell Gon: _don’t go – not so far_.

In the end, he hadn’t said a thing.

 

* * *

 

Three months after Gon leaves, Killua boards a ship and gets off at Whale Island. He walks by himself for half a day until he finds himself at the doorstep of the house Gon grew up in, and he knocks on the door.

Mito smiles at him when she answers the door. “Oh, Killua, you should have called ahead,” she says, though she doesn’t seem ruffled in the least at his unexpected visit. “Come in, make yourself at home. Should I make some tea?”

“No, that’s okay. I’m just passing through,” he says, even though the both of them know very well that this little house deep in Whale Island isn’t the kind of place one simply passes through while traveling elsewhere.

“I’ll make tea anyway,” Mito says, and turns to the kitchen to set a kettle to boil.

Twenty or so minutes later, they sit at the dining room table with steaming mugs of afternoon black tea. “Mito-san,” Killua says, clasping his hands together over the table, “weren’t you upset that Gon ended up leaving the way that he did?”

Mito smiles, and Killua can tell from the expression that she has been waiting for him to come ask this question for quite some time now. “No,” she replies. “If anything, I suppose I was expecting something like that to happen sooner or later.”

“What do you mean?” Killua asks.

“Well, when Gon decided that he’d wanted to take the Hunter examination, he kept it a secret from me,” Mito says. She smiles tenderly, eyes softening around the corners, and Killua’s heart twinges a little – a reverberation of the ache that he knows Mito must feel in her own. “He made all his preparations without letting on what was on his mind at all. Even now I don’t know how many years he knew that I’d lied about his father being dead… or how long he had thought about the decision he came to. Do you understand what I’m trying to say now?”

Killua takes a sip of tea. He likes it better with a few more sugar cubes, usually, but it brings a pleasant warmth to his chest and stomach. “Sure, that Gon is an idiot,” he replies wryly, knowing very well how crass he’s being.

Mito, though, just brings her hand up to her mouth and laughs. “He may be, but at least he’s a clever idiot,” she says. Killua decides to appreciate that she is politely ignoring the fact that Killua is willfully attempting to ignore the point.

 

* * *

 

An obvious fact: Killua does not know what kind of expressions Gon makes when Killua isn’t there to see them. That is to say, there could be expressions of his that Killua has never seen before; on the flip side, it is entirely possible that isn’t the case – rather than a cat, it’s Schrödinger’s smile.

This is not a fact that bothers Killua, he’s not so petty and possessive a person. It is, however, a fact that sometimes makes him pause and wonder in idle moments: what kind of face is Gon making right now, as he explores through the Dark Continent? All he can do is hope that it’s a good one.

 

* * *

 

Five months after Gon leaves, Killua stays a night in Yorkshin City on a whim while in between jobs. Somehow, he remembers Yorkshin seeming a lot bigger when he was younger – illicit and exciting, where the high-class and the underbelly of the world came into intersect. When he gets off of the train, rather than feel any exhilaration or nostalgia, he wrinkles his nose at the smell of something that smells like a questionably illegal substance and takes only a two-minute detour to buy a cup of hot chocolate before he books off to the Grand Yorkshin Hotel. He asks for a suite where the windows face into the neighboring building if possible, and the receptionist blinks with polite confusion as him as she puts him in room 1018. He does not feel a need to explain his healthy paranoia for being watched has led him to prefer rooms with obstructed views.

It’s the first time he’s been in Yorkshin since he was twelve and he’d thought Gon would always be a steady constant by his side. He’s not sad so much as he feels blank – though he’s not sure which of the two is worse – and Killua doesn’t need Gon Freecss by his side, but he does need to know that Gon will always return to his side sooner or later.

He tries to fall asleep and ends up staring for nearly an hour out the window instead. The view from room 1018 truly is appalling.

 

* * *

 

After Gon’s eighteenth birthday party had begun to peter out in the wee hours of the night, he and Killua had snuck out to a quiet spot on Whale Island and built a fire together, laughing together – enjoying purely the state of being together. Even after they’d run out of things to talk about, they laid on the ground inches away from each other in comfortable silence. Killua probably could’ve fallen asleep then and there, on the hard earth, in the cool night air – but then Gon had raised a hand up to the sky and said something that jerked Killua back into wakefulness.

“Killua, I think if I go to the Dark Continent, I might find something about myself I couldn’t find anywhere else,” Gon had said, and even though the volume of his speaking tone was the same as always, Killua could hear a note of exhilaration in it, just a hint of breathless excitement. Above them, the night sky shone bright with stars and the half moon, shyly hiding half of its face.

It would’ve been pointless to ask to go with him, Killua knew – if Gon had wanted somebody by his side during the trip, he would have asked for it in the first place – the questions that floated through his mind were deeper than that. _Why does it have to be by yourself?_ _Why didn’t you say something to me sooner? Who put it in your head that you needed to go?_

Where do all the words that you swallow back go? Is there some sort of metaphorical graveyard for words not spoken, or is it impossible to lay to rest something that never actually came to be in the first place? Killua is pretty sure that he could write novels with all the things he never said.

“Then you’d better find it before you come back,” Killua had replied. In the distance, a bird began singing its greeting to the day, and Killua could see a tinge of sunrise’s redness in the horizon. Gon laughed. Killua closed his eyes and shut them from the early light to remind himself: it’s always darkest before dawn.

 

* * *

 

Some people call Killua clever, but he doesn’t think he is – Killua is calculating, Gon is clever. The difference between those two traits manifest in manifold ways, sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant. The clever person, for instance, is the one who finds a way to worm his way out of a trap against the odds; the calculating person is the one who avoided the trap in the first place.

Some people call Gon a good friend, but Killua doesn’t think he is – Gon is a good person, Killua is a good friend. The difference between those two traits also manifest in manifold ways, sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant. The good friend, for instance, is the one who drops everything to rush to help a friend in need even at his own expense; the good person is the one who doesn’t call for help until he knows he needs it.

 

* * *

 

Eight months after Gon leaves, Killua gets drunk for the first time downing expensive shots of alcohol after a particularly difficult job with the other two Hunters he’d worked alongside. He does it almost as if on a whim, a desire to try it and see – can his body even become intoxicated after all those years of training it to endure anything that might harm it?

The answer, as it happens, is neither yes nor is it no. Intoxication is more or less a series of imbalances – his consciousness goes abnormally sharp at his center of vision even as it blurs around the edges, like his body is attempting to tip all systems back into equilibrium by sheer endurance, and Killua ends up experiencing a peculiar mixture the sensation of getting drunk while simultaneously sobering up.

Things which are normal: getting drunk with friends and co-workers. Things which are not normal: the inability to get properly drunk. Things which Killua is used to: being neither normal nor abnormal. He gets a splitting headache that lasts hours afterwards, but that night he laughs openly and feels loose, boiled down to the sheer essences of what makes him Killua Zoldyck, and that feels good, right, as things should be.

The summit of years and years of undoing what was wrought upon him was the night that Killua realized he is comfortable being by himself just being himself – with the assistance of Mr. Jack Daniels.

 

* * *

 

Killua can tell that ever since they came back from the Dark Continent, Leorio and Kurapika have suspected that there is something there that triangulates three things: Gon, Ging, and the unknown factor that passed a father’s genes to his son. To be honest, he suspects that there’s a possibility someday Alluka will be called to the Dark Continent with the same siren song – the knowledge in her bones and blood that Nanika’s origins are probably out there, in the unknown.

If Killua loved himself the most, he would have gotten on his knees and dragged at Gon by his boots, begging him not to go. _There’s nothing you need to find out there. You’re you, no matter where you come from, aren’t you?_

But Killua is a good friend and an even better brother. Someday in the future, if Alluka decides that she wants to go to the Dark Continent himself, he’ll let her go too. Where you come from does not decide who you will be, but only when you know where you first planted your feet can you know how far you’ve come.

 

* * *

 

Killua Zoldyck has loved Gon Freecss for as many years as they’ve known each other. But he doesn’t fall in love with Gon until ten months after Gon leaves to explore the Dark Continent and he gets a text message on his phone from an unregistered number –

> Killua, are you gonna come welcome me home?  
>  I have so much to tell you!!

 – and he slides gently from the state of ‘loving this person’ to ‘being in love with this person’, like a gentle early morning wave washing over a peaceful beachside shore. His heart is finally ready.

_I want to be with Gon, and this time, I’ll make him listen to everything I have to say._

 

* * *

 

Ten months and ten days after Gon leaves for the Dark Continent, the two of them reunite on Whale Island on a night not unlike the last one they spent together. They build a fire together, laugh together – enjoying purely the state of being together. Even after running out of things to talk about, they lie on the ground inches away from each other in comfortable silence. Killua probably could’ve fallen asleep then and there, on the hard earth, in the cool night air – but then Gon raises a hand up to the sky and says something that jerks Killua back into wakefulness.

“You know, Killua,” Gon says, eyes softening around the corners, “there was this one time I really thought I was going to die… and then I heard your voice. And I can’t remember exactly what I thought you were telling me, but I remember thinking to myself – no matter how badly I screw up, I have to pick myself back up. I have to make it back so I could tell you… I messed up, but I’d do it all over again if I had to.”

Above them, the night sky shines bright with stars and the half moon hides its face as if to give them privacy. _Ah_ , Killua thinks to himself, smiling as he raises his own hand up. _So that’s where all the unspoken words go_.  

**Author's Note:**

> I like the theory that Gon was born of something in the Dark Continent (and probably also Nanika). 
> 
> Written for the prompt: _Hold on to the delusion that you need me; think yourself more deeply into it. It won’t do you any harm, you know, and if one day you want to get rid of me you will always have the strength to do so; but meanwhile you have given me a gift such as I never even dreamt of finding in this life._ (from [here](http://31-days.livejournal.com/3066060.html))
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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